Darkness
by keep-me-posted
Summary: Even in their darkest hour, they still managed to find each other. [Rated for later chapters.]
1. Chapter I

**A/N**: I'm finally back in the groove of writing Hero's Cuties...and it's not even a fluffy OneShot. Honestly, I don't know how well this story is going to turn out, but the idea wouldn't leave me alone, so I had to write it. I tried to explain what I could in the first chapter without making it seem too boring. Here's the simplicity of it: A cybug apocalypse has taken over Litwak's arcade several years after the movie. Thanks for reading!

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Wreck-It Ralph or any of its characters.

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"Halt! Who goes there?" Sergeant Calhoun asked the approaching figure. She was sitting just beyond the entrance of her game on her watch-shift, a cocked gun in her hand.

No one really liked being watchman. Even during the day when there was slightly more traffic coming and going through the main arch, it was one of the most boring jobs you could offer to take. Calhoun liked it. She enjoyed being alone, and she was one of the few that could actually stay awake on the job, since sleep didn't exactly come easy for her.

The shadow halted, surprised by her voice, rather than running after her the way a hungry cybug hybrid might do after months of starvation, so she lowered the gun she'd been holding. But only slightly.

"I said, '_Who goes there_?'"

The voice mumbled something that sounded like a name, but he sounded a bit unsure with his response.

This didn't surprise Calhoun. Her team hadn't recovered a game character in months, but of the few they did, they didn't remember much. Nobody did.

"Where do you come from?" She asked, continuing her interrogation. Asking these questions proved to be useless in the past, due to the massive memory loss among the arcade, but it was standard protocol, and Calhoun was all about the rules.

He pointed behind him in a direction that was much too difficult to guess just by simple finger gestures.

"State your business, then."

"I wish I knew, ma'am." She saw him take something off his head and crumple it in his hands, nervously. A hat, she guessed.

When Calhoun could clearly tell this man showed no threat, she gestured him forward. When he made no movement, she spoke up. "Come forward, civilian."

She stood up as well, closing the distance between them in a flash. Due to the darkness of the game, only a single light blaring over near her watch chair, Calhoun noted right away that the man was a lot shorter than she'd guessed.

No matter. If there was anything she learned about this arcade, it was that characters came in all shapes and sizes.

She raised her gun to his eyes, initiating a small light that focused on one's pupils to prove they were not infected by the cybug virus that pretty much destroyed this arcade over a year ago.

A small screen at the tip of her gun blinked green. He was clean.

The man seemed unfazed by the fact that she just raised a weapon to him. Most characters at least flinched at the gesture. He seemed focused on something else entirely, however.

That being, her. This didn't completely surprise her, of course. In the past, she was sure she'd been hit on far more times than she'd have liked. But that was before the dark days, as everyone called them here. A year's worth of hectic days, sleepless nights, and intense battles slowly showed through her code.

If she were a looker before, she certainly wasn't anymore.

She cleared her throat to jar him from what little thoughts he had, and grabbed for his arm, perhaps a little too roughly.

A second precaution, in case the eye test was faulty. Characters with the cybug virus already implanted in them would have slight glowing lines across their arms. Something they used to mistaken for programmed veins and caused many future deaths when brushed aside.

When she reached for his arm, however, she didn't find glowing veins, but a cluster of blue pixels seeming to radiate from his body.

Calhoun blinked, clearly shocked. "You're a glitch," She stated, her lips barely moving.

He nodded, with a look that mirrored relief, perhaps at knowing that whatever he had at least had a name, therefore couldn't be that bad.

And while it wasn't as bad as the cybug virus, glitching wasn't that much better. In fact, from the many studies they had worked on over the course of the year, it usually proved to be fatal.

She had known someone once with the same defect. Before the dark days. She couldn't remember much about them, couldn't even place their face, but the memories did show up on more than one occasion.

The memories Calhoun could actually remember came and went as they pleased. They didn't just come at night, so she found it lazy to simply call them nightmares. And they didn't exactly last long either, sort of flared through her mind as fast as they came.

Months ago, Calhoun decided to call them "flashmares". They never showed faces, places, or names. Just random parts and cutoff voices here and there, sometimes triggered by an item or word, sometimes coming for no reason at all.

Some memories cut down to the very core of her programming. Others felt more on the surface of her being, but they hurt twice as hard.

It wasn't till she found herself practically squeezing the code from the man's arm that she realized she was already in the middle of having a flashmare.

She immediately looked at his face, ready to apologize for her actions, since usually she woke from her flashmares by screaming or punching whatever was nearest to her.

The man didn't show any implications that she did either. He was focused on her face again, perhaps igniting some memory of his own.

His seemed to be much more pleasant that her's, though, as the corners of his mouth seemed to twitch in what she believed was called a smile.

Something she hadn't seen on anyone in months. She noticed she was stroking his arm, small blue pixels dancing on his skin, and immediately pulled away.

Suddenly a thought occurred to her. "If you're a glitch," her eyes narrowed. "How did you get past your game's force field?"

He nodded again, expecting this question to come up. He collected his thoughts and cleared his throat. "For months I have tried to force myself through the invisible barrier of my game. It hurt like hogwash, but I eventually learned how to get my right hand all the way through, perhaps because it's one of the many places on me that doesn't glitch."

He demonstrated this by lifting up his right hand and poking and prodding it with his left hand. He was right. While his left hand spasmed in and out once in a while, his right hand remained as still as her's.

"When I went to try again today, however, I realized the barrier had been shut off, and I easily made my way through." He finished.

This didn't surprise Calhoun, either. Power outages were a common thing around here. Games held on as long as they could, till eventually they just shut off entirely.

Game barriers were usually the first to go. She didn't even need to bother asking how he made it through theirs, as they shut it off manually months ago, to save energy on more important things, since game barriers proved to be useless at keeping cybugs in and out of other games.

"I didn't know what to do, or where to go," The man continued. "Then I saw the light pouring from your game just across the way and figured it was safe."

She nodded. The light near the entrance of the game wasn't just for the watchman, but for game characters to find there way to the safe zone that was their game. Despite the high energy it took to power it, they found several abandoned characters this way.

The man slipped his hands into his pockets. "It was certainly a big difference to the darkness I've been living in."

Calhoun pieced his words together carefully. "Where did you say you came from again?"

He pointed behind him again, the name of the game obviously long forgotten.

Calhoun fixated her whole being on the direction of his finger. Her look turned grave. "Show me."


	2. Chapter II

**A/N**: Thanks for all the reviews, everyone! I'm really excited about this story, and it's nice to see other people excited about it, as well. I hope this, and future, chapter(s) meets expectations.

And to answer gaby: Yes, the rest of the Core Four will be included in this story, but I can't promise they will show up for quite a few chapters.

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"This is it," He said, as they came to the entrance of the game. "This is my game."

Calhoun nodded. "I thought so."

"You know it?"

"We call this Ground Zero."

"What does that mean?"

"It means," She started, refilling her gun as a slight precaution. She'd never been here on her own before. The placed was deemed uninhabitable just a couple months ago. She had no idea people still lived there.

"This is where the cybugs first hit that Mod-forsaken day over a year ago. We're still not sure how it happened, considering the cybugs are features from our game, but we can tell by the damage left that it began here."

She ducked under a piece of fallen ceiling. "Honestly, it's a miracle it's still upright." She wanted to add how miraculous it was that he was still alive, but she figured he already knew that.

They began walking. Thankfully, the barrier was still down. Sometimes the power short-circuited and things, such as game barriers, went in and out at random.

The walk was quiet. She was used to this. The man beside her obviously was not. He cleared his throat. "So, w-what's your name?"

She didn't look at him. Didn't even blink. "Calhoun."

He considered this. "Is that your first or last name?"

She hesitated, but only for a moment. "Last." She spoke up again, before he had a chance to question it. "What about you? You got a name?"

"Felix," He smiled.

"What makes you so sure of that?"

He coughed, directing her eyesight down to him. He was pointing at the name tag sewn onto his shirt. It easily read "Felix". Now how did she miss that? She continued on, Felix trailing behind.

"Is it uncommon for game characters to remember their names?"

"Yes," Calhoun said, her gun light continuing to survey the scene. She could tell by the quiet that he was waiting for more. "Common thoughts or memories like names or faces were the first to go when the virus took over."

"So, do you only know your last name from a nameplate of sorts, like me?"

She felt defensive for a moment, or perhaps she wasn't used to this much talking, so it just spilled out. "I remember my whole name."

Felix could tell by her tone that she had no intention of telling it to him, but he marveled anyway. "Why do you think that is?"

She stopped walking for a moment and sighed. "I'm not sure. I have this theory. See, unlike most people, I locked my full name away, only giving it to people I could really trust. So, when the virus hit and started sweeping everyone's minds, it took mostly only surface memories. And due to my different mindset, left my name completely alone."

Felix looked as if his head hurt. A side-effect to not only the virus, but probably his glitching, too.

Looking up again, Calhoun breathed in. She really wanted to search the area without Felix, but she didn't like the idea of leaving him behind. Especially not in his condition.

As Calhoun continued swinging her gun from side to side, the flashlight focusing on plenty of square shaped items, too beyond repair to be recognizable anymore, they happened upon a house beside a large mountain of broken red bricks.

She gestured her gun at the shack. "This your place?"

He shrugged. "It is now, I guess."

"What does that mean?"

"Seeing how this is _my_ game, I'm pretty sure I used to live somewhere way up there." He pointed to a run down building behind her. Judging by it's stature, the only accessible floors now looked to be the ground and first, but even they were pretty questionable.

He sighed at the building for a moment, before turning around and heading inside the shack that was pretty rundown itself. But at least it looked a bit more habitable.

She followed him inside, though a bit more cautiously.

He was already sitting on a large, dirty, old sofa when she entered.

"It isn't much, but I like to call it home," Felix said, smiling at the large interior. "I feel comfortable here."

Comfort. This was a foreign feeling to Calhoun, not having felt it ever since the dark days began.

She knew she must have felt it before. In fact, she herself felt something when she glanced around the house, but she couldn't place the feeling. Perhaps it was comfort, but she could never be sure.

She suddenly felt more cautious. Not of just her body, but her heart, as well. She had caged it many months ago, when she watched several of her fellow soldiers die trying to save this blasted arcade. She gave up on hope, comfort, life, and any other sort of good feeling a long time ago.

Felix was messing with the sofa, drawing imaginary shapes on the fabric, when she returned from her thoughts.

"I think I knew the person who lived here," he said, so softly, Calhoun wasn't even sure he was speaking to her. "I think they were my friend."

Calhoun didn't like this conversation. She didn't like this house. She didn't like the feeling of comfort she was sure this place was bringing.

She quickly changed the subject, not even trying to be subtle. "You keep saying this is your game. What makes you think that?"

Felix hopped up. "Mostly because of this." He headed over to the corner of the shack and held out a golden item. "I think it's a weapon of some sort."

Calhoun studied weapons of all kinds, so she easily identified it. "Yeah, it's a hammer." Not a battle hammer, of course. More of a common household hammer, used for building or fixing things. Not exactly something that made you the hero of a game. "What makes you so sure it's yours?"

"All I know is, I was clutching this when I finally woke up, almost as if I was protecting someone or something with it."

Calhoun carefully took the hammer from Felix and studied it. It was heavy, most definitely made of the gold color it portrayed. Still, even with it's weight, she doubt it could have done any real damage to a cybug.

She handed the hammer back, quickly noting how his entire body seemed to stay whole, barely glitching when he held the hammer at its base. She shook off the thought, figuring it was nothing.

"Where were you when you finally woke up?"

Felix thought about this for a moment. "I can show you, if you'd like."

She gave a curt nod as a response and followed him outside the house. After walking for about five minutes in silence, Calhoun looked down and spotted the item he brought along with him. "You didn't need to bring that with you, you know. Just seems like an unnecessary weight to carry around."

He stopped short and twisted his arm around to get a good look at it. "What do you mean?"

"The hammer," She said. "It's clearly made of pure gold, which makes it pretty heavy."

Felix's face showed genuine confusion. He tossed the hammer up on the air and caught it a couple times. She noticed the slight flash she had seen before each time he caught it, but continued to shake it off, blaming it on not enough sleep.

Finally, he shrugged, flashing her another smile. "Feels pretty light to me."


	3. Chapter III

**A/N**: Another day, another chapter. Thanks so much for the kind comments!

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"This is the place," Felix said, waving his hand towards the tall steel door they had happened upon.

Calhoun readjusted her gun to a more comfortable position on her shoulder and reached out with her free hand. There appeared to be no doorknob, so she instead began pushing on the door, but it didn't budge.

She looked around for a keyhole or handle of some sorts. She noticed what appeared to be a control panel to the right of the door, but it too was inaccessible.

"It's locked," She stated, rather annoyed. While "off-limits" was a rule she had always enforced, it wasn't one she particularly cared for when she was the one forced to be limited.

She turned towards Felix. "If it's locked, how did you get out?"

He shrugged. "It wasn't locked on the inside. I guess when I left the place, it locked on its own."

"So, you haven't been inside since?"

He shook his head.

"Have you ever tried to get in since you got out?"

He shook his head again. "I was too busy just trying to find a way to leave my game."

Calhoun sighed. She was never a fan of people wasting her time, but when the virus hit, time became even more scarce, therefore more precious to her, so she disliked it even more.

"Is there anything you can remember about the inside that might help figuring out how to open it?"

Felix shook his head, clearly upset that he had upset her. "It was pretty dark when I woke up," He admitted.

She tried not to look too angry. That was understandable. She didn't expect someone who had woken up so many months after the cybug attack to even bother trying to take in their first surroundings.

"Wait," He said, after a moment.

Calhoun looked at him, hopeful.

"I remember...I remember lights. Flashing lights. And buttons. And a lot of wires."

The sergeant furrowed her brows, curiously and turned back towards the door. She wiped her gloved hand across the top center of the door, revealing an indented CR once the dust cleared. "The Code Room."

This was strange to her. Code Room's were dangerous and rarely ever used. Only a select few of her core even had permission to access them after the virus hit, and they were trained to handle such equipment.

Back when the war first began, and cybugs began taking over every game, they soon found their way into each game's code room. They never stayed long, though. Usually code wires at the front were finished off first, but cybugs usually left before they reached the middle, which would have shut down the game, completely short-circuiting it, if they had continued on.

Calhoun had a theory about this, though it was still unsure, that cybugs didn't like the taste of a game's code. That eating the real thing was a lot better to them. So eventually the code room's were no longer in danger, but her core locked them up anyway, just in case.

Calhoun's eyes narrowed on Felix. "How did you wake up in your game's code room? What were you even doing in there?"

Her sudden interrogation left him flustered. "I-I don't-"

Her glare softened. "You don't know. Of course you don't know." She held a hand to her forehead, trying to force a flashmare from coming on. "Sorry, this is just a lot to take in."

He stood there a moment, waiting for her to recover from her previous outburst. After a moment, she dropped her hand and breathed out. When she looked back down at Felix she was still seeing spots, but she did manage to avoid the flashmare.

He smiled wistfully at her and Calhoun felt the ends of her lips twitch, but they didn't move upwards like his. She forced her mouth in a straight line and turned on her heel. "Come on, then. It's been a long night. We should try to get some rest." She didn't bother saying what a lost cause this would be for her.

"What about the code room?" Felix asked, matching her stride as best he could on his tiny legs.

"I'll have some soldiers take a look at it in the morning."

"Why can't you do it?"

"I don't have the permissions to access such a place."

"I would think a sergeant would be allowed to go anywhere she liked."

Calhoun stopped short. "What did you say?"

He stopped as well. "What?"

"How did you know that I'm a sergeant?"

"Oh, well, I just guessed that you were of some higher authority by the way you walk. And talk." He looked nervous, like he had crossed a line of some sorts. "You seem important."

She raised an eyebrow, but decided his statement seemed harmless. She continued walking again. "A lot of soldiers act the way I do. I wouldn't go assuming someone's position just by the way they act."

"Yes, ma'am."

When they reached Felix's house again, he cleared his throat. "Well, I guess this is where we part ways."

She looked at the house, at the entrance of the game, at him, and then back again, biting her lip nervously. She wasn't sure what forced the next words from her mouth, but she didn't try to stop them. "You should come and stay at my game."

By the time she said this, he was already walking towards his door. "Why?" He asked, heading inside. She found herself following him, but she couldn't think of an answer.

Why should he? He's already proved he can manage here on his own. As she contemplated her answer, she found herself watching Felix remove his gloves, immediately spotting the gold ring on his left hand.

"It's a wedding ring," He answered, when he noticed her stare.

"You're married?"

He shrugged. "I guess I must have been." He looked solemn for a moment and Calhoun realized she struck a nerve.

"Right, sorry. I just-" She paused, trying to find the right words. "Do you remember her at all?"

He shook his head.

"Then why bother wearing it?"

He looked at her, his face the most serious she's ever seen it. "I would much rather not remember, then try to forget."

The statement itself didn't really make sense, but it seemed to spark something deep inside Calhoun, both intriguing and frightening her. She dropped her head and finally answered the question he asked when they first walked in. "I'd feel a whole lot better if you came and stayed in my game."

When she raised her head to look at him, his face was full of wonder. "Please," She insisted in a soft voice. "At least just for tonight."

He nodded, a small smile forming on his face. "Okay."

She didn't know this man, she didn't know why his safety was so important to her, and she certainly didn't understand why his smile almost forced her to copy the action, her face trying to use muscles it hasn't used in months.

But knowing he would be placed safely in a bunker not far from her, gave her a sense of that comfort thing Felix was talking about earlier. And she decided she liked it.


End file.
